Hamish McLachlan: The uncomfortable conversation that saved Mark Allen’s life

It’s a conversation that most men are wary to have, but for Mark Allen, opening up about his health concerns to a friend may have helped him avoid the inevitable.

Former golfer and now sports radio host Mark Allen with wife Tricia and children Olivia and Kelly. Picture: Mark Stewart

For the best part of two decades, Mark Allen has been a regular voice on Melbourne radio. A former professional golfer, Mark was naturally fit, played weekly and was a regular in the gym. Nearing 50, fit and healthy. Or so he thought. A bit of blood on the loo paper was enough to convince Mark to get himself checked out. He was given the all-clear. Then more blood, another check-up, another all-clear. But if he didn’t play golf one Wednesday and inquire about a racehorse, Mark wouldn’t be here.

HM: Now we’re doing this interview in the lounge room. Should we be doing it in the bathroom?

MA: Yes, we should be! I’ve just had the bag removed yesterday so I’m not completely sure how we will go here … in fact, hang on … I’ll be back shortly … Sorry … I think we are all set now.

HM: Perfect. We’re going to talk about your battle with cancer in a moment, but remind me: how did you get your start in the media?

MA: It was 20 years ago this month at the 1999 British Open at Carnoustie. I led the qualifying with Michael Campbell, who won the US Open, and a little guy called Luke Donald. He ended up being the No. 1 player in the world, and here I am talking to you laid up on the couch talking about bowel cancer!

HM: You can get unlucky — on both counts!

MA: Correct! Because I was leading, three radio stations called me because I hadn’t done much for a while, and an Australian leading the British Open Qualifying was a big deal 20 years ago. Three radio stations called — 927 with KB, Triple M with Pig, Jimmy and Roo Boy, and then 3AW breakfast with Ross Stevenson and Dean Banks. I told them a couple of stories, they thought it was pretty funny stuff, and I’ve basically been in the media ever since!

Mark Allen and David Schwarz have formed a popular radio partnership

HM: Nice one. Now the golf and media careers are well known, but the battle with bowel cancer less so. You went to the loo in what month when you realised there was a bit of blood on the paper?

MA: The first time I saw it might have been two years ago, and it went away very quickly. In July last year I went to my local GP because seeing bright red blood on the loo paper had become a regular occurrence. The doc had a good look around, checked for prostate cancer, and said, “Listen, I can’t see anything”. She asked me whether I’d lost any weight, and I said I hadn’t. She said, “Listen, I think I can see and feel a haemorrhoid. Go get yourself some haemorrhoid cream”, so away I went.

HM: Then?

MA: Two months later it was bleeding again, I still had haemorrhoid cream in my cupboard. It stopped the bleeding again. The very last week of radio in 2018 I heard a news reporter on Macquarie Radio saying that Australia was No. 2 behind Denmark for fixing bowel cancer. It just triggered me to go again. I said to myself, “I’m still bleeding — I’m not doing anything next week, I should go back and get checked out again”.

HM: Given you were still bleeding, was it in the back of your mind it was more than haemorrhoids?

MA: Yeah, it was actually. Every once in a while, I used to see some blood in the water as well. Maybe once a fortnight. With a young family and a mortgage, I just thought I should get it done again. We went in there, she had another look around and she said, “Listen, maybe it’s time to get a colonoscopy”.

HM: Same doctor?

MA: Same doctor. I didn’t even know what a colonoscopy was, to tell you the truth. A lot of people get it done over Christmas, and because of that there was a 10-week wait. I was all set, and she made me feel very at ease that I was healthy. I hadn’t lost any weight, so the idea of cancer went out the window and I was comfortable waiting 10 weeks.

HM: Months earlier she’d said don’t worry, just use some haemorrhoid cream …

MA: Six months earlier, I reckon. I wasn’t too worried as I’ve never really had a sick a day in my life, never had a broken bone, never had an operation. Nothing.

HM: It was early December … the colonoscopy was booked in for January 31, and you went to play golf at Kingston Heath the next day, unfazed.

MA: Yep, the next day. I always play golf on Wednesday. I’m friends with Dr Geoffrey Wells, who owns the good horse Snitty Kitty. He was there and getting ready to play in the afternoon. I’d just finished, and I went up to ask him how Snitty Kitty was going, and then I was about to walk off, and for some reason I turned and told him about the blood, and he said, “Let’s not wait 10 weeks”.

HM: You were close to walking off and saying nothing?

MA: Absolutely. He called some of his mates, and they’re pretty impressive mates. Professor Ian Jones, who’s probably the leading guy for bowel cancer in this country, was one. I saw him the very next Monday for blood tests and then on Thursday after that, I was in the foetal position, waiting for a colonoscopy.

HM: What made you say to the doctor on the putting green, “This is what’s happening?” Males aren’t very good at talking about that stuff. Would you normally have done it?

MA: No one’s ever asked me that question. Umm … you know, I reckon I was sort of bragging to him. “I’m going to get a colonoscopy, I’m a hero, I’m doing the right thing, you proud of me?” I reckon that’s what it was about. I’m quite private — I wouldn’t normally have that conversation — I wouldn’t normally tell people I play golf with or I knew that I was going for a colonoscopy. I got very very lucky. I might be dead if I didn’t.

Mark Allen in action at the Curlewis Pro Am. Picture Jay Town.

Mark Allen lines up a putt.

HM: What was the outcome after the colonoscopy?

MA: Bloods on Monday, and then Thursday comes, and I’m in the foetal position, and Prof Jones comes in and I ask him how the blood tests went. He said, “Clear as a bell. You just go to sleep, we’ll get rid of a couple of polyps and you’ll be on your way”. When I woke up, I could see in his eyes he had some bad news, and he told me that he’d found a tumour, and it “looked likely”, which is code for malignant.

HM: Terrifying.

MA: Yep — horrible news. I got a CT the next day and a PET scan the day after. After the CT scan, they said I was a stage three cancer patient, because it had gone through the walls of my rectum. Then the PET scan showed a spot in my chest. The worry was that it was bowel cancer in my chest. They were hopeful that it was lung cancer, but I’ve never smoked a day in my life. The next Monday they jammed something down my throat and they took a little piece from my lungs. I got a phone call that afternoon saying that I was a stage four cancer patient.

HM: Stage four … there is no stage five …

MA: There is no stage five.

HM: The average life expectancy, I read today, for a stage four cancer patient, is just eight months. Only 4 per cent get to five years.

MA: I searched for the same information as soon as I heard it. I’ve never told anyone that but In the car on the way home I said, “Hey Siri, what percentage of people survive stage four cancer?”

HM: Siri gives you terrible news, alone in the car. Where does your mind go?

MA: I thought, “Am I going to be one of those people that everybody knows, where they say, “He was diagnosed with cancer and he was gone two months later?” That was my biggest fear. I felt like I’d been robbed, because still to that point I was feeling great. I was playing good golf, I was breaking records in the gym. It just didn’t seem right.

HM: You didn’t feel any ill effects? Blood on the tissue, blood in the water, but there was no feeling of being ill?

MA: Nothing. I was a stage four cancer patient, and feeling great. I was getting stronger. I’d joined the gym, only been a member for two months and I was breaking records.

HM: Trish wasn’t with you when you get diagnosed as stage four.

MA: I told Trish over the phone, because she wanted to know straight away. I said, “Look, we’ve got a bit of a battle here — it’s in my lymph nodes, and the concern now is if it’s in the lymph nodes of my lungs. The doctors told me that it moves very slowly in the rectum, but once cancer gets in your lungs, it moves very fast”.

HM: And it was in the lungs.

MA: It was. When they looked at the scans it wasn’t a big spot in my lungs, but it was significant. They operated and took away 20 per cent of my lung capacity. When I woke up, I couldn’t breathe, but the doctor came to me straight away. The bedside manner of all these people has been unbelievable.

HM: World class.

MA: Unbelievable. As soon as I woke up, the doc walked in with a big smile on his face. He said, “Everything went well, and the brilliant news is that we put your lymph nodes under the microscope, and there was nothing in them. You’re clear”. We got it at the right time. It took me about two months to recover to the point where I could do anything physically, but the fact that they got it all, and it wasn’t in the lymph nodes was a huge win.

HM: Then they let you recover before operating on your rectum?

MA: They had to let me recover from the lung operation as I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t make the bed without blowing up. From there it was radiation and chemotherapy on the tumour that was in my rectum. The goal was to shrink it down through the rectum and shrink it so much that it’s gone. It happens a lot. They told me that 25 per cent of people get it shrunk down to nothing with the radiation every day for six weeks, and chemotherapy pills.

Mark Allen with his family Tricia Allen, Olivia Allen (12) and Kelly Allen (10). Picture: Tony Gough

HM: Then the operation?

MA: Yep — once I’d recovered from the chemo and radiation, it was time for the operation in May. They did the same thing, cut it out, and the doctor again was there when I woke up and said, “I think we got it all, mate”. Again, that was another big relief.

HM: How much of your rectum did they take out?

MA: 75 per cent. I woke up with a colostomy bag as well. Let me tell you, they’re not very cool, Hame, those colostomy bags. Thank god, I’ve have just got rid of it this week. Small blessings. Two and a half months of dealing with the bag was really tough. The bag was a big one to tick off and put behind me. It’s funny, a lot of people saw me on Open Mike and I think a lot of people thought that it was the cancer that made me look thin and weak, but it wasn’t. It was the size of both the operations that had just really taken their toll on my body. To this day I haven’t had an ill effect, apart from the blood on the toilet paper, from any of the cancer. It’s just from the operations when your body needs to heal. Even now, I can hardly talk, and I’m having a tough time. There’s a big hole in my stomach where the bag used to be, and there’s a big hole there because if your food doesn’t start passing or it goes in a knot, or if there’s a blockage, they want to be able to get in there pretty quick and help you out. They just leave you a hole in your tummy, and that’s hard to deal with. After the first two operations I’ve got nothing but trust with whatever they do, these blokes.

HM: Australian medical practitioners are as good as there is anywhere in the world, aren’t they?

MA: Yes. The bedside manner has just blown me away.

HM: Can you imagine having this illness in a third world country?

MA: No. I can’t. I don’t know how you’d do it. I don’t even know how you’d have this illness where you have to share a hospital room. I’m a 50-year-old man, and I used to feel like I was 35, maybe even 30. Three or four weeks after the second operation, I felt like I was 110. It knocks you around so much, eating changes, and you’re eating food as much as you can, then you empty the bag and it’s out of you two hours later. Your body doesn’t have any time to soak up the goodness in the food, it’s just pushed out the bag and you’ve got to eat again. I’d wake up at 11pm and it’s a full bag, and you have to drop off and push out of the bag, clean up and then go back to bed. Then you’d wake up and you’d have some gas, and my bag would be like a balloon. When you’re new to the bag you have a couple of accidents in the bed, so they’re tough times getting up with your wife at 3am and changing the bed sheets.

HM: If nothing else, you learn a lot about your life partner through an ordeal like this.

MA: Trish has been a superstar. She and I have been up changing the sheets at 3am together, and not a blink of the eye, ever, she just helps get it all done. To tell you the truth, you don’t know how anyone’s going to react until a terrible situation arrives — and Trish has been just unbelievable.

HM: When you told Trish on the phone, was it an emotional conversation or a pragmatic approach?

MA: The doctors didn’t mention death or percentages in stage four, they just said this is what we’re going to do. I just relayed that to Trish. We didn’t tell the kids purely because the doctors said not to. That was really good advice because one, they probably wouldn’t understand the complexities of it all, and two, when we found out we only told close family and maybe a handful of friends. We just thought it would be simpler to get on with it together, as a two-person team.

HM: Was it a good approach?

MA: It really worked for us. When the news started turning around and it looked like it was going to be a better story, and we knew I was going to miss four or five weeks of work, we said what was going on. Once that happened, the outpouring and support from all of our friends was overwhelming. It was a good story then. If we’d told people at the start, and we got the same reaction as we did halfway through … people were crying. It was like I was already dead. They might have called Siri as well. That was a moment in time where we looked at each other and thought, we’re so glad we didn’t tell anybody.

HM: Had you had any family history at all with cancer?

MA: Dad’s had prostate cancer, Mum’s in hospital right now with a blood cancer, I had a cousin — Sallyanne — who died of cancer, and another cousin and good friend Nik Morey had a big thing cut out of his neck, but no bowel cancer. Probably just as much cancer as anyone else.

HM: Bowel cancer is very curable if you catch it. The issue is most Australians delay. Postpone. Ignore.

MA: I’m here telling you that we all get the poo test far too late. The doctors are saying that now. You should get the test when you’re about 35, then you get another one at 40, another at 45, because you almost guarantee half the people won’t do it at 35 and 40. That’s when they should be sending it out, because there are more and more people getting it. I’ve got friends in America who we eventually told, and they’ve got terrific jobs. When they reach 50, in big business it is encouraged to go and get a colonoscopy. It is a big killer. I don’t know whether it’s the food or what it is, but there are more and more people getting bowel cancer at a younger age. There are poo tests turning up at 50 that no one wants to do, which is absolute garbage.

Mark Allen is on the final straight to a full recovery. Picture: Tony Gough

HM: Do you know how long you might have had the tumour for before finding it?

MA: The doctors reckon the tumour might have been there for three and a half to four years. They’d be guessing about the one in the lungs. Again, when I talk to Dr Geoffrey Wells, he says, “Another 10 weeks and you would have been dead, mate”. He’s really confident in that.

HM: You’re one of the most positive blokes I know. What was your darkest moment through it all?

MA: I think the darkest moment was when I got the news by myself after they got a little bit out of my chest, when they told me I was stage four. The moment just before I asked Siri what likelihood I had of survival as a stage four cancer patient was terrifying. Hearing what Siri said was my darkest moment. She told me the truth — and the truth wasn’t pleasant.

HM: Chemo and radiation. Have you got much left in front of you now?

MA: Yep. I was supposed to do four chemo cycles before this operation I’ve just had to get rid of the bag, but the chemo cooked me and I can’t do more just yet. They said, “Listen, we’re just going to give you a break. You’ve got to get your strength back. While we’re doing that, we’ll get rid of the bag”.

HM: The poison of the chemo just destroys you, doesn’t it?

MA: Yes, but it wasn’t supposed to destroy me like this one did. It was making food go through me, and it wasn’t supposed to be too bad. Of all the chemos I’ve had, it’s not the one where you lose your hair. I’ve got three cycles left, which is eight weeks worth, and hopefully they’ll give me some time to recover. Hopefully then I’ll be back in business, get through those eight weeks, and at the finish line.

HM: Given that you were a stage four cancer patient and now according to your PET scans, cancer free, does your perspective differ? Do you get up in the morning and see things differently?

MA: Not yet. I feel like I’ve always been pretty good perspective wise. I probably worry about the kids and Trish more than I ever have, because maybe I realise how quickly things can be taken away from you. I just don’t want to ever leave them.

HM: Well, thanks to playing golf and being interested in the punt, you are going to be with them for a lot longer yet, I hope.

MA: Ha — that may well be the moral of the story. Play golf, and be interested in the races. But please, don’t put it off, don’t be the one that didn’t get tested in time. If you are reading this, when you finish reading, book an appointment.

HM: I’ve loved listening to you the past 20 years, and I’m going to enjoy listening to you for the next 20.

MA: Let’s hope so — good on you, mate.